Bomb Queen: Trump Card #1
It’s 2024. Donald Trump has brushed aside the 22nd Amendment to run for a third term. He’s got some serious competition, though. A certain sexy supervillain has entered the race giving citizens of the U.S. a choice between the greater of two evils as writer/artist Jimmie Robinson presents the first issue of Bomb Queen: Trump Card. The pleasantly crude political satire opens on a less than perfect debut for a character who has been out of circulation for a few years now. She returns with an issue pitting her against the villain-in-chief just in time for the week of the Republican National Convention. Bomb Queen has perfect timing.
Bomb Queen has been on the lam for a while. Where would a fugitive former dictator of her own highly corrupt fortress city be most comfortable? Russia, of course. It’s no surprise that an American superhero would find her there and capture her. Naturally, he’s going to bring her to justice...by forcing her into running for president. It’s a fate worse than life imprisonment for all but the most ego-driven citizens of the U.S. Naturally, Bomb Queen accepts the proposition. A stylishly sexy supervillain is no running for president against the style vacuum of a very, very ugly man.
Bomb Queen’s return hits at the appropriate moment. Robinson has clearly chosen a very sharp point in history in which to launch a mini-series featuring the sitting president as a major antagonist. Robinson’s crude humor may fail to perfectly capture the potential of a Bomb Queen vs. Donald Trump face-off. Still, the first issue has to spend some time establishing a connection with the world of Bomb Queen and how it relates to contemporary politics of an exaggerated darkness four years from now. Much of this is covered in a cable news panel that goes on for a bit too long. Robinson contrasts this against the comically brutal violence of Bomb Queen’s life in a refreshing return for the character.
Robinson’s art playfully engages in mayhem between the anti-heroine and the hero who has captured her. Bomb Queen’s acrobatics move across the page with graceful fluidity. The cable news discussion panel doesn’t feel quite as dynamic. There’s a distinctly different personality for each panelist, but it’s really difficult to make a group of talking heads look interesting on the comic page. The cutaways to person-on-the-street interviews and the ongoing news crawl at the bottom of each panel add a bit of clever visual atmosphere, but it’s still pretty stagnant stuff visually.
There’s a tremendous amount of potential in a politically-charged Bomb Queen set four years into a dark future. The surreally graceful and sexy fascistic villainy of Bomb Queen could be incredibly appealing when contrasted with the fumblingly graceless greed of a bloated wannabe fascist egotist who is all too real on this side of the comic page. Hopefully, Robinson can manage a more slickly appealing dynamic for the rest of the series now that the backstory has been dealt with.
